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This article is from the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 6 volumes, edited by William S. Powell. Copyright ©1979-1996 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.

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Jones, Armistead

by Armistead Jones Maupin, 1988

23 Sept. 1846–24 Sept. 1925

Armistead Jones, lawyer, was born in Vance County, the son of Protheus Epps Armistead and Mary Francis Hawkins Jones. Through his father he was descended from Matthew Jones who lived in Warwick County, Va., during the middle 1600s, and from the Armistead, Tabb, and Westward families of Virginia. His mother was a daughter of John Davis and Jane Boyd Hawkins of Vance County.

Jones attended Horner School at Oxford, but early in the Civil War—at age sixteen—he enlisted in the Confederate Army as a member of Moseley's Battery and served with that command until the fall of Fort Fisher in 1865. After the war he moved to Raleigh and, while supporting himself as a telegraph operator, studied law under Judge William H. Battle; he was licensed in 1870.

Settling in Raleigh, Jones practiced law first in partnership with his brother, William Westwood, and later with his son, William Branch. For several years Armistead was attorney for Wake County, and in 1900 he was appointed solicitor for the Judicial District which then comprised Chatham, Johnston, Wayne, and Wake counties. He was elected to the latter office on two occasions and served for eleven years. Jones declined an appointment by Governor David Fowle to the Superior Court, preferring advocacy in the courtroom. He served as chairman of the Wake County Democratic Committee for twenty years and was an outstanding figure in the political life of the state.

On 3 Jan. 1872 Jones married Nancy Haywood Branch, the daughter of Confederate General Lawrence O'Bryan Branch and his wife Nancy Haywood Blount. They had three children: Nancy Branch (m. Thomas Martin Ashe), Mary Armistead (m. Alfred McGhee Maupin), and William Branch (m. Mary Seaton Hay). Jones was an Episcopalian and a member of Christ Episcopal Church, Raleigh. He died in Raleigh where he was buried in Oakwood Cemetery.

References:

Grady Lee Ernest Carroll, The City of Raleigh, North Carolina, and the Civil War Experience (1979).

Confederate Military History, vol. 4 (1899).

Ernest Haywood, Some Notes in Regard to the Eminent Lawyers Whose Portraits Adorn the Walls of the Superior Court Room at Raleigh, North Carolina (1936).

North Carolina Bar Association, Proceedings (1899–1948).

Beauregard C. Poland, North Carolina's Glorious Victory, 1898 (1898).

Additional Resources:

Henderson, Archibald. "William Branch Jones." North Carolina, the Old north state and the new vol. 4. Chicago: The Lewis publishing company. 1941. 51-54. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015051124603;view=2up;seq=80

A., Craig, Lee. Josephus Daniels: His Life and Times: His Life and Times. University of North Carolina Press. 2013. 198. http://books.google.com/books?id=qfVEGsArAGUC&pg=PA198#v=onepage&q&f=false

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